Henderson Library

The Zach S. Henderson Library supports Georgia Southern University by providing access to information, collections, and services designed to meet the scholarly needs of the University and the general public. The Library promotes independent lifelong learning, employs a learner-centered service ethic, and ensures a comfortable and secure study environment.

Facilities

The Henderson Library is centrally located on campus in a four-story building constructed in 1975 and expanded in 2008 that included the first Automated Storage and Retrieval System in any library in the Southeast region. The total square footage of the building is 235,888.

The Library offers one of the most extensive operating schedules of any academic library in the state of Georgia. During the fall and spring academic terms, the Library is open 143 out of 168 hours each week to provide Georgia Southern University faculty, students, and staff access to a wide range of library services, collections, study space, and computer equipment. The Library houses more than 418 computers for public use that provide full Internet access and a variety of academic software applications such as word processing, spreadsheet, database management, programming languages, graphic design, and presentation.

The Library has seating for more than 2,000 patrons to study, research, and meet. The Library also offers three classrooms and 29 rooms for group study, multimedia viewing, and presentation practice throughout the building that are equipped with computers and projectors. The Library is committed to providing equitable access for users with disabilities to all of our facilities and services. A coffee shop called Zach’s Brews is located on the second floor where it provides a relaxed area for patrons to enjoy food and drink, study, and exchange ideas.

Collections

The Henderson Library is a major academic resource for the campus, with its extensive collections of academic books and journals, government publications, special book and manuscript collections, AV materials, and links to networked information resources in various electronic formats.

Currently, the Library's collections contains over 650,000 volumes of printed books and bound periodicals, 432 print serial and periodical subscriptions, 903,000 micro-form units, 46,000 AV titles, and 351,900 government documents. In addition to the extensive physical collections, the Library also provides access to a growing number of electronic resources which includes over 358,600 electronic books, 94,400 electronic journals, 83,800 electronic media, and 327 databases that contain indexes, abstracts, full-text articles, and digital images. These electronic resources are easily accessible both on and off campus.

Through its online library system (GALILEO Interconnected Libraries, GIL) and website, the Henderson Library extends its resources and services far beyond the walls of its building. The Library is a full participant in the GALILEO project, Georgia’s statewide library consortium which comprises 29 institutions across the state. GALILEO provides an additional three million book titles, thousands of academic journals, and hundreds of databases for Georgia Southern University faculty, students, and staff to access and borrow. The Library’s interlibrary loan service can also help eligible users obtain materials located outside Georgia and throughout the world.

The Library’s special collections unit maintains and houses rare books, manuscript collections, and artifacts relating to the history of the Statesboro region and Georgia Southern University.

Services

In addition to its collections and facilities, the Henderson Library also offers a variety of services and programs to assist users in locating and evaluating information resources to meet their research needs.

Library faculty and staff at the Information Desk located in the Learning Commons on the second floor offer in-person, telephone, and online assistance in utilizing library resources. Subject library liaisons are available to provide face-to-face library workshop to classes or groups, library orientations and tours, one-on-one research consultations, assistance in ordering or locating materials, and customized hand-outs or research guides. A list of library liaisons is available on the Library’s website.

The Henderson Library along with the Office of Research Services and Sponsored Programs are also happy to collaborate with researchers on data management plans for grant proposals. Digital Commons@Georgia Southern (http://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/) is an open access digital collection managed by the Library to collect and disseminate the intellectual and creative output of the University’s faculty, staff and students. Our Institutional Repository (IR) program is provided as a freely accessible, perpetual, online archive for the intellectual output of anyone at Georgia Southern University.

Contributions come from all over campus and include theses/dissertations, conference proceedings, research publications, brochures, and newsletters. Besides housing our University’s scholarship and creative works, Digital Commons has the capacity to publish online journals and manage conferences. The site also hosts SelectedWorks web pages for our faculty, which are profiles that highlight faculty publications and achievements. All these features of the repository help expand the visibility and influence of Georgia Southern University to outside academic communities by making publications more readily available to the world on the open web.

The Henderson Library’s administration actively seeks comments and suggestions concerning any aspect of its operations and collections. The Dean of the Library is available to meet with any member of the academic community to discuss the resources of the Library or its connections to other information networks and services throughout the world. To contact the Library, please visit the Library website at http://library.georgiasouthern.edu/.